I then proceeded to give an increasingly dire account of what would happen if people didn’t blink to protect the moisture in their eyes. She still wanted me to stop. I finally ended the conversation by telling her that if people didn’t blink, then their eyes would shrivel up and fall out. Since she likes me to have eyes for things like reading stories and finding princess crowns, she decided I could keep them.

That was a couple of months ago.

Yesterday we were at the chiropractor, when the musculoskeletal diagram caught her attention.

Laylee: Hey mom! See that pirate? He’s got no EYES!
Me: Hmmm…
Laylee [matter-of-factly]: It’s because he never blinked and then they fell out. That’s sad. I try to blink sometimes in front of Magoo to teach him that he needs to moisturize.

Well halle-doodly-lujah! Any day now I expect to find her rubbing Oil of Olay into his sockets.

Remember the old “if you don’t put your tongue in the space where your tooth fell out then your new tooth will grow in gold”? guess what I thought the first time I saw a girl with a cap on her tooth? It was silver, but still. I figured the rumor got it wrong, or maybe she only stuck her tongue in the space once so the silver was sort of a runner-up consolation prize.

Charlie had a BlowPop recently, the kind with the gum in the middle. Our kids never have gum, so this was a novelty for him. I told him (at LEAST three million times) NOT to swallow the gum, but he did anyway (to SPITE me, I’m sure).

Next thing I know, I’m telling him that the gum will stay in his stomach for SEVEN YEARS! Unfortunately, he thought that was cool and will pull his shirt up now and point at his belly and announce, “I think my gum is RIGHT THERE.”

My mom would call this “synchronicity:” Just as I was reading about Magoo moisturizing, Noah came in with nail clippers and proceeded to give himself a pedicure. He then announced, “I should shave my leg.” I asked him why, and he said, “because there’s some really long, long hairs.” I refrained from genderizing the shaving of the leg, meanwhile wondering about those lonely hairs on the other leg.

Also, when Noah saw the floating DYM head, he immediately requested to “play that funny Halloween game with the giant that comes out and he says, ‘what the…?’ and he tries to stomp on the little paper bag that’s on fire and shouts like an owl.” Ahhhh, yes. The flaming bag of poo. Except he thinks the bag is full of CANDY!

One day my sister told my nephew that if he didn’t start behaving, a big cockroach would come out of his hole and drag him down with him. Well, that settled that! My sister told me she said that to her son and I looked at her like she was crazy! All I could think was that my nephew must have been a very, very misbehaving boy! He eventually left behid his good ways and that cockroach never did come up to get him, so that put an end to that little story!
Kids are amazing…

One time, my toddler lost her balloon in the parking lot. She was very upset about it. So I told her that the balloon went to the beach to go find the sun, which had gone night-night behind the ocean. That calmed her down– but a few weeks later she ran off when I went in to the bathroom, and after being brought back by the neighbors, told me that she had gone to the beach to see if there were balloons there! 😮 And she still tells me about her red balloon that went night-night behind the ocean with the sun once in a while (like at 5 this morning.) Ay. Will the story never die?